Report shows early glimpse at Creative Suite 6 features

updated 05:10 pm EST, Mon January 24, 2011

by MacNN Staff

Includes Maestro, Helium, Muse

"Independent sources" have confirmed information from an Adobe survey hinting at the features of Creative Suite 6, according to AppleInsider. Included are several new components, such as Maestro, which will allegedly let people "sync, store, share and review" projects across multiple computers and users. Users will be able to keep up to 100GB of material on Adobe servers, and send sketches to Maestro via the Ideas mobile app. Built-in format conversion should make it easier to share files.

Another new app, called Helium, is expected to be a JQuery-based aid focusing on creating widgets, animation and other content using web standards like HTML5 and CSS3. Preview and animation timeline tools will be available, along with support for importing SVG files and coding JavaScript using a task-based workflow. The timeline function will allow for live control, as well as opening HTML documents and visually selecting objects.

A third component called Muse should in theory allow graphic designers to create websites without knowing HTML or CSS. Widgets and embedded elements, such as YouTube or Google Maps code, will accordingly be draggable into an HTML page. Custom editing of widgets is planned, along with an Adobe hosting platform through which people will be able to push trial sites, live sites or updates.

More minor in the upcoming suite is Time Tracker, a tool intended to record how long people spend on various files in a project. Manual and automatic logging options will be available, and the most visible face of the feature should be a plugin appearing in each of the main Creative Suite programs. To avoid duplicating functions Time Tracker should support integration with existing tracking systems.

The number of add-ons in this so-called "suite" is indicative of how bloated Adobe's endeavours have become. They just seem to pile new stuff onto old stuff and say look, it's better, pay us. And all along, things get slower (spinning beachball), and crash more and work less reliably, and the workspace becomes more convoluted. That trend will only continue...

The number of enhancements in this so-called "Mac OSX" is indicative of how bloated Apple's endeavours have become. They just seem to pile new stuff onto old stuff and say look, it's better, pay us because we'll introduce features, software and updates that won't be compatible with last version of the Operating System. And all along, things get slower (spinning beachball), and crash more and work less reliably, and the workspace becomes more convoluted. That trend will only continue...

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